A personal diary keeping people abreast of what I am working on writing-wise.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

BACK TO YOU

Our German editor has passed along the news that their edition of 12 Reasons Why I Love Her was reviewed by Spiegel Online, one of the top news portals in Germany. It looks like it was reviewed next to Adrian Tomine's latest, and in equal measure. Actually, based on the rough translation from Babel Fish, it looks like we get even more attention than Mr. Tomine.

Who a picture to make itself wants from the love and its enemies - the everyday life and the misunderstanding - must Comics read. The new works of James Rich and Adrian gate mine tell touching and binding of developing and offence of a large feeling. They had quite a while hidden themselves, on my desk, in my Bücherregal and finally in a pile books on my Nachttisch. Possible that they waited only for the correct time: On the approximately six-hour course trip, at whose end my friend at the station would fetch me. To hear no laptop, no work reading, to read much time, to see from the window music and to let the thoughts float. There were they now thus. Two Comics, which came along rather unaufgeregt: " 12 reasons, you too lieben" by Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones and " Half Wahrheiten" of Adrian Tomine. In black-and-white, with clear line drawn, told it me of the love, its developing and offence and the difficult time between them. Of humans, who look for each other and hide, who wait for the correct time and sometimes miss it: of Gwen and Evan, which meet coincidentally in the cinema (" 12 reasons, you too lieben") and despite vermasseltem first DATE, jealousy and insulted vanity find again and again to each other. Of Ben Tanaka (" Half Wahrheiten"), that its friend Miko not to hold can and also nothing else in its life. At first sight rather everyday stories. Nevertheless, perhaps also a little therefore, absolutely binding, intelligently and poetically. The authors succeed in lending by exact observations, small gestures, original dialogues, joke and ESPRIT to its characters depth and color. Rich and Jones their touching and complex love story besides into twelve chapters divided, which tell them in not chronological order. Which does not work in this case like a artifizielle bag plaything, but on the contrary, the charm of history still increases. Each chapter is placed in front a song, which gives the tendency. Both the taste and Könnerschaft prove also here: Who hangs the slat for its history in the imaginary soundtrack Nancy Sinatra, which plays Pet shop Boys, Bryan Ferry, Buffy Sainte Marie and Beth Gibbons, rather highly. Rich and Jones take the hurdle problem-free. When the course in the station brought in, I had heard, from the window had seen and to mean thoughts had after-hung music. Not least thanks Adrian Tomine, Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones I did not feel a minute of it as lost.

My confession...

Author of prose novels and comic books like Cut My Hair, It Girl & the Atomics, You Have Killed Me, and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her. Jamie's most recent novel is the serialized book Bobby Pins and Mary Janes, and his most recent graphic novels are the sci-fi romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Madame Frankenstein with Megan Levens; and the weird crime comic Archer Coe & the Thousand Natural Shocks with Dan Christensen. He also co-created Lady Killer with Joëlle Jones.